Curse

Mesmer1287 · Jul 22, 2005, 01:15 AM // 01:15

I hate the fact that I could buy a Steel Ignot for 150g at the merch just 5 days ago and now it costs me 400g a pop. The same with linen and all other materials and dyes.

If someone were to pick up the game now, start a character, bring that char all the way through the game into Droknar's, they would not be able to afford everything that I was able to get on my first character and STILL have some plat left over. They are turning this game into a farming for items/gold when they keep changing the good farming areas so there is either 1: More harder monsters or 2: Decrease the value of the drops (mathmatical value, not price).

Please ArenaNet, fix this for the lesser players. (and a Bazaar Zone to get the spamers out of Lion's Arch!)

StrongBow · Jul 22, 2005, 04:33 AM // 04:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by hydrak

First of all, stop all your cries about "economy crashing". The economy is at its best right now. No player or group of players who can dictate the economy by messing with the buying prices from the NPC traders.

Here are the examples:

Ecto = 10k gp
shard = 3k gp
black dye = 5k gp

These are the prices that you can buy the above items from sellers. Sellers can't jack up the prices based on buying prices from NPC traders. If the sellers don't like to sell their items at these prices, they can always go and sell it to NPC traders for 100gp (smart move!).

Can you please go at the "Rare material Trader" and tell me the price for "Globs of Ectoplasm" and "Obsidian Shard" ?

As for balance! Why before the update the price for runes of Superior Vigor/Absorbition would tend to go down and now they tend to hit 100pt.?

Why would Ecto sell 10k and Shards 3k and do you think this is a good "Balanced Price" for these items?

Remember! You would need 120 Globs and 120 Shards to be able craft "FoW Armour Set"

P.S. 120x10.000=1.200.000 Plats (For Ecto) 120x3.500 = 420.000 Plats (For Shards) ! Now if someone would tell me what kind of economy is this?

PhineasToke · Jul 22, 2005, 04:47 AM // 04:47

I've decide to sit it out till they fix it. Stupid having to spend hours pharming instead of playing

Wa$d · Jul 22, 2005, 04:53 AM // 04:53

I remeber a distant time before rune traders when the economy was good, you guys remeber that......so long ago......so long......now its gone to h-e-double hockey sticks

hydrak · Jul 22, 2005, 05:37 AM // 05:37

You guys are crying regardless of what anet is doing. With the latest update, anet basically took out the rare material trader by boosting the sell/buy ratio at the NPC rare material traders. If you want a fair price, buy your rare materials from players. Only deal with NPC rare material traders only if you are desperate.

=HT=Ingram · Jul 22, 2005, 05:47 AM // 05:47

agreed... Its just the people that were inflating the economy artificially that were complaining that prices were coming down overall... Glad some other people are seeing the benefits...

PhineasToke · Jul 22, 2005, 05:49 AM // 05:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by hydrak

You guys are crying regardless of what anet is doing. With the latest update, anet basically took out the rare material trader by boosting the sell/buy ratio at the NPC rare material traders. If you want a fair price, buy your rare materials from players. Only deal with NPC rare material traders only if you are desperate.

You think I want to spend hours waiting and haggling with $$#@$$^&*&^&^%$$$ instead of playing? Sure, glad you have all day to play.

hydrak · Jul 22, 2005, 05:53 AM // 05:53

Make up your mind, people... You were crying about the additions of NPC traders, particulary the rune traders. Now that one of the NPC traders is somewhat separated from gameplay, you are also crying. What do you want? NPC traders or not?

To PhineasToke, if you didn't know, you can actually craft most rare materials, and that is part of gameplay. Would you also like someone else playing this game for you?

Ultimate_Gaara · Jul 22, 2005, 06:44 AM // 06:44

wow, this econ is really nice, earlyer today Sigils were only 38K... i almost bought one, but i think ill wait for my guild leader before i do anything... i dont know about everyone else but i like the way Anet made it

MoebiusLost · Jul 22, 2005, 07:44 AM // 07:44

Even in a virtual world it is only fair to have a completely free market.

Kabale · Jul 22, 2005, 09:41 AM // 09:41

Well a smart player would put his prices at the same level or slightly below the selling price of the merchant, so he would still be gaining max amount of cash... A player would be stupid to sell it for less.

StrongBow · Jul 22, 2005, 01:58 PM // 13:58

I am still waiting for an "Answer" from the original "Topic Starter"!

GG :/

noblepaladin · Jul 22, 2005, 02:07 PM // 14:07

I don't mind A.Net adjusting the ratio of the traders to make it less profitable to farm materials, but they didn't adjust the ratio, the made them completely illogical. Sometimes, they would offer as high as 80% even though they clearly do not need the item (I remember selling tanned hides to them for 25g each!!! and they were selling for about 30 each). And then when they are completely sold out of ecto, they still offer only 100g for them. Before they used to offer between 60%-80% of their selling price, but if they lowered it to 50%-70% or 40%-60% then that would be enough to make rare material farming to be quite unprofitable, as selling the original item would net more gold than the common materials + chance of rare materials + expert salvage kits involved. Right now it's best to horde up everything until you have alot and then unload it to other players.

MSecorsky · Jul 22, 2005, 02:58 PM // 14:58

The merchants/traders are pawn shops. Very similar in pricing and practice. It's the best you can do with shops that do not have a regular restock, have no real competition and make fewer than average sales per week (thinking that the profit for each sale needs to increase to make the difference).

Here's a thought on how to fix...

1. Resupply. Touched on earlier, have the merchants get resupplied once or twice a week on all items.

2. Merchant goals. Have the merchants price items to sell out before the next restocking. If items sell too quickly, raise the price. Too slowly, drop the price. This will set prices to reflect a real supply/demand.

3. As for buying items, set the buy prices to fluctuate from say 25 to 75% of current sell, based on need, and these items become available for sale. Items high in stock that can't or won't move well, low price offered and visa versa. ALSO... allow the merchants to refuse to buy items that are overstocked. (No one will like that... but it makes sense.)

4. For restocking, if the merchant has greater than X% of an item in stock still when resupply comes, don't restock that item. Keep prices reasonable by controlling supply. This should also result in merchants in different towns having different prices and items available, making people shop around, balancing things out.

Well, I don't know how hard this would be to code, but I think the results would be a real stable economy. People may not get the prices they want, or be able to unload 12,000 plant fibers on a merchant, but that's the way it goes.

As for weapons... little different... allow the weaps merchant to resell weapons sold to him, at least a fraction of the gold/purps. This should bring prices of weapons back to more reasonable levels rather than having to pay 400K for a bow that does two more points of damage than yours does if a charr farts or something.

Furthering this line of thought... varying the amount of resupply can regulate the prices in the economy. Plus... say twice a week you could see these neat resupply caravans parked in town...

Thoughts?

Mak · Jul 22, 2005, 03:34 PM // 15:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by MoebiusLost

Even in a virtual world it is only fair to have a completely free market.

A virtual world eceonomy,as the majority of of MMORPG work, will bot have a stable "free market". These virtual economies suffer form hyper-inflation due to game mechanics, more gold is always being added to the economy in the form of gold drops. To reduce inflation and make the economy more managable ther needs to be some way of reducing the increasing amount of gold in the ecnomy. There are two ways I can think of doing this destroy wealth theough gold sinks, dwarven ale, or reduce the frequency of drops, nerfing. A-net has chosen to nerf, dwarven ale is not enough of a gold sink.

This IMO was the wrong decsion, because it means more time spent for the same rewards equals less entertaing. My recommedation toe Anet would be to unnerf and add some massive gold sinks. Examples: When observer mode comes out have betting on which teams will win, similar to horse racing where by odss are determoned by the playes bets and the house, A-net takes a cut. Another example pay for passage on the ship to fie Island. An entry fee for the tournament. In GVG maybe have guild put up a purse and Anet takes a 5% commision from the purse.

So enough of the rambling, in conclsion, Anet needs to consder what they want the game envrionment to be; pure fun or more grind.

Oh Anet great game, but stop F---ing up your on product. Other than PVP rewards and bug fixes most of your major implemtations have been questionable at best. Example the only reason a rune trader was needed was for PVP and this need has been unnecessry since PVP rewards began. Ramble ramble

MSecorsky · Jul 22, 2005, 03:42 PM // 15:42

The ability to buy enhancements for your Guild Hall could be a potentially huge sink... for example 25 slots of storage for 1000K, 50000 wood planks, 10000 iron ingots, 25 dyes, etc etc. Allow a guild max of say 10 storage containers.

The amounts would of course need to reflect reality, they're just pulled out of my rectum, but you get the idea.

hydrak · Jul 22, 2005, 04:43 PM // 16:43

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kabale

Well a smart player would put his prices at the same level or slightly below the selling price of the merchant, so he would still be gaining max amount of cash... A player would be stupid to sell it for less.

It depends on the demand of the particular item. Putting high prices on low demand items, and you'll end up selling to merchants for 100gp or less.

Tell me which rare materials is in high demand and why?

To Strongbow, read my posts carefully. I've never advised trading with NPC traders in any of my posts. I suggest you use a little bit of thinking; it isn't difficult to figure out how to get ectos for 10k each and shards for 3k each.

noblepaladin · Jul 22, 2005, 05:13 PM // 17:13

I don't like where the economy is going because right now most people are unwilling to sell any materials to the trader, therefore the trader prices will start to go up. As trader prices go up, player to player prices will also go up because plays generally use the traders price as an estimate of how much a certain material is worth. There doesn't seem to be any stop to it until stuff eventually gets expensive enough (or the trader simply runs out of stuff to sell completely, like they did with ectos and shards) that people will just salvage all the materials they need themselves. Also, there is no competition for the traders until prices get high enough for people to be willing to deal with the annoyance of trading with other players. Basically we will end up with massive farming trying to get materials and massive WTS ____ materials all over the place.

Divinitys Creature · Jul 22, 2005, 07:09 PM // 19:09

They should make capture signets and skill points tradeable

ManadartheHealer · Jul 22, 2005, 07:13 PM // 19:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by Divinitys Creature

They should make capture signets and skill points tradeable

And maybe they should make faction tradeable too?

I don't know how that would all work out though....